Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

What’s Wrong with the World
is dedicated to the defense of
what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of
the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the
Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Catholicism and An Integrated Philosophy

As my esteemed colleague Lydia McGrew illustrated in this post, there is a fairly severe malfunction in the mode under which many Christians undertake to argue contested points with non-Christians, especially in the corridors of educational institutions. This is a follow-up to that. The demise of forthright insistence on principles, even ones that are not popular, struck Catholic universities during the last century at least as hard as it struck in other places, perhaps more so. As of 1970 there was, for all practical purposes, no supposedly Catholic college in America in which one could reliably get sound Catholic philosophy, and biology that didn’t directly oppose that philosophy.

Some men saw the problems, and decided to write a critique of the trend, an analysis of the problem, and a solution – at least for the college arena. Thus they set forth the foundational document – called “the Blue Book” after its first published form - of a college that they then went on to bring into being and operate. Below are some excerpts of that document. I think that they make the point better than I could.

The willingness of a college to secularize itself in the hope of monetary gain presupposes that it already views its Catholicity as something that is subject to negotiation, which in turn presupposes that it has rejected the traditional doctrine that the essential purpose of a Catholic college is to educate under the light of the Faith. We find, in fact, that the most outspoken proponents of the secularization of the Catholic colleges are not arguing about economic considerations but are attacking the very idea of a college that educates under the light of the Faith.

We find, further, that Catholic college graduates, students and professors are, by and large, unable and unwilling to resist these attacks. Indeed, the most virulent attacks now being made on Catholic education — as well as on the Church itself — emanate from some of these graduates, students, and professors. That this should happen points to a grave deficiency in Catholic education; institutions whose essential purpose is to combine Catholic wisdom and secular learning have given birth to a generation of teachers and learners who in large part reject such a purpose as irrelevant or contradictory…

a) While the college was boasting that its curriculum was up-to-date, that it had courses in the latest disciplines such as sociology and modern psychology, whose paradigm is Newtonian mechanics, it was also proposing philosophy courses based upon a general conception of reality opposed to the philosophical presuppositions of sociology and modern psychology. Similarly, its courses in physics and chemistry presupposed, without question, a philosophical view about the nature of matter and motion which contradicted what was taught in the philosophy courses. b) But even within the philosophy curriculum itself anomalies existed. The philosophical formation of the students was essentially faulty in that faculties themselves were fundamentally divided on the question of whether there is philosophy or merely philosophies. The effect of this division was to propose to the students that philosophical education would at once lead to a certain understanding of reality, which understanding was at the same time relative basically to the changes of time and place. This opposition was in effect between those who claim something can be known and those who are skeptics — and the resultant effect on the students, who quite naturally attempted to integrate both positions, was skepticism

c) The proponents of perennial philosophy sought to be true to the nature of Catholic education as traditionally understood by the Church … but even here the American Catholic college has been troubled by yet another failing…. In [the] attempt to proportion such wisdom to the modern student’s mind so as to minimize its intrinsic difficulties, the proper character of this wisdom was distorted and misrepresented in various ways. In part this misrepresentation was due to the impossibility of simplifying these difficulties and in part the result of attempting to restate traditional doctrines through the thoughts and language of contemporary philosophies which in fact understand reality in ways incompatible with this wisdom. In the measure that this was true, the perennial philosophy was lost. d) Even more seriously, the religion courses were isolated, and in no way performed a sapiential function with respect to the rest of the curriculum, contenting themselves with a superficial restatement of the truths of Catholicism....
Moreover, with the general decay of the liberal arts because of the elective system, philosophy and theology could not often be taught with sufficient emphasis on their inner structure qua intellectual disciplines. As a result they often assumed a needless and unbecoming authoritarian stance, which not rarely made them unpopular…

Such an education demands that all the parts of the curriculum not ordered to technical concerns should be conducted with a view to understanding the Catholic faith, and that the Faith itself should be the light under which the curriculum is conducted…
The first and most pressing duty, therefore, if there is to be Catholic education, calls for reestablishing in our minds the central role the teaching Church should play in the intellectual life of Catholic teachers and students. Since the Faith liberates the believer from error in his submission to its teachings, it both guides and strengthens his intelligence in the performance of those activities which constitute his very life as a thinker; and man, since he is distinguished by rationality, lives above all through the living activity of thinking. We should not be surprised, therefore, that we are promised such help by Our Lord Himself when He says, “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.” ( John 10:10)…

One of our indubitable experiences is of the recurring opposition of our higher aspirations and our lower passions. So much is this opposition a part of our lives, a part which is absent from the lives of the brutes, that it has affected the formulation of various views of human nature. Socrates teaches, in several of the dialogues, that the individual man is a soul, and that the body is attached to it in this life as a punishment for the misdeeds of a previous existence. In order to escape further punishment and gain the happiness of which it is capable, the soul must, by living a philosophic life, turn its attention to eternal things, so that it may prepare itself to exist forever without the body, which existence is its final beatitude. So plausible is this view, based as it is upon our internal experience of the conflict within us, that many Christians have thought that their own lives were bifurcated into a lower or animal existence which is concerned with this world, and a spiritual life of the soul alone which is begun here, but which is real only in the after-life.
If we reflect, nevertheless, on the teachings of the Christian Faith, we can see that this position cannot be true; St. Paul insists on our believing in the resurrection of Christ as well as in our own which is to take place in imitation of His. So important does he think it is to believe in the resurrection that he says that if Christ be not resurrected, our whole Faith is vain, for it is through our resurrection that death, the punishment for sin, is conquered, whereby we become human persons again…. The Socratic position, on the other hand, would rob death of its sting, for it would mean the actual separation of two already separate things, and not the cleavage which divides the human soul from the body it had informed to make a man.

As in the previous example [in which is discussed Socrates’ conclusion that man is perfectible if he is simply taught the truth], Socrates’ position arises from the consideration of important truths, and he does explore with remarkable intensity the life lived for the sake of the truth as compared with the life of passion and animal appetite, and shows their incompatibility — which suggests to him that the body and the soul are conjoined as opposites which war with each other. The Christian, however, by the doctrine of original sin as well as by the other doctrines of his Faith, can both see how Socrates could hold such a position, and yet understand in a way closed to him the cause of that seemingly essential opposition which leads him to deny the substantial unity of soul and body, and finally to deny the importance of the body except as a punishment for sin….

These few examples illustrate, as could many more, that the Catholic Faith is a guide in the intellectual life as well as in the moral life for those who subject themselves to it, and that the understanding is crippled radically when it refuses to stand in the higher light which is given it. The acceptance, however, of that higher light as a guide demands that one restate and clarify in principle the whole of Catholic education, and show it to be fundamentally superior to and different from any education which is deprived, or which deprives itself, of the strength conferred upon it by the teaching Church. This view demands that the intellectual life be conformed to the teachings of the Christian Faith, which stand as the beginning of one’s endeavors because they guide the intelligence in its activities,…

The point I most want to emphasize is this: Faith is not an impediment to appropriate investigation in any field. God the source of truth is One, Truth is one, and nothing can be a valid *proof* of a false statement. Therefore, when science or philosophy states (in definite terms, so it thinks) that X is true when X is directly opposed to the faith, a good Christian will merely say: “well, it may seem so to you but I think we will have to proceed a little more cautiously and examine more closely some of your assumptions.”

The Christian should expect his faith to improve his capacity to find truth outside of doctrine, and he should not be submissive or apologetic about having such faith in discussions about non-doctrinal issues. With an integrated respect for truth, he should be prepared to think that his faith may give him insight to (not directly doctrinal) truth that would be difficult to others without such support.

A friend of mine, who believes in the Christian God, was a nuclear physicist by education and training. He is hard put to name a single other such “professional” who also believes in the God of Christianity, and he got out of that profession decades ago. There are, undoubtedly, professions in which faith is more at risk than in other professions, for no particularly good reason. Sadly, Catholic colleges have allowed philosophy to become one of these.

[Disclosure (and advertising plug): The Blue Book is the founding document of my alma mater, Thomas Aquinas College. The college of 350 students studies the Great Books of the Western World in tutorial and seminar format, with classes of 12 to 16 students discussing the texts of our greatest minds producing their most cogent arguments, works from Genesis and The Iliad to Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Carl Jung's Analytical Psychology. The college is living proof that Christian faith can be taught alongside of (and integrated with) openness to truth in all the other disciplines, and informing the search therewith. It is the only Catholic college in the world that insists on 8 semester courses of philosophy, 8 of theology, 8 of mathematics, and 8 of the "hard" sciences, along with literature, history, economics, etc.]

Comments (45)

I did not remember that the name of the document was The Blue Book; but I remember seeing it many years ago. In 1974 I read a critique of The Blue Book by some followers of Herman Dooyeweerd. They tried to make the case for a distinctively Reformed view of education. [Some of these men were later involved in the founding of Redeemer College in Ancaster, Ontario] I remember thinking at the time I was more comfortable with the straightforward thinking of The Blue Book then was was by the silly presuppositionalist critique of it.
Much debate has went on in the Reformed Christian community sine 1974. Sadly almost no one is looking back to B. B. Warfield as they think through the idea of the relationship between faith and reason in academia. [I have thought of making buttons that say What Would B B Warfield Do] A recent more balanced statement of the relationship of faith to academic studies from a presuppositionalist perspective can be found at:http://www.covenantteacherscollege.com/iap/file1.pdf

The Christian should expect his faith to improve his capacity to find truth outside of doctrine......

This seems to imply, which is reasonable, that intellectual abilities exercised in studies of purely theoretical interest are 'transferable' to the realm of practical inquiry.

However, I can't believe that non-Christians are necessarily at a disadvantage in the quest to find truth(s) outside of Christian doctrine. (That is to say in pursuit of fragments of the Whole Truth for which human beings yearn.)

Suppose (by almost a miracle) that Richard Dawkins became a Christian. While his conversion would no doubt effect a moral transformation in his character, why should it make him a more competent scientist?

Incidentally, the excerpt from the foundational document of Thomas Aquinas College seems to be modelled on Newman's discourse in The Idea of a University, concerning the establishment of a Catholic University in Ireland.

So how does an integrated Catholic mind (or Christian generally) deal with modern New Testament criticism? The mainstream view, far and apart from what Jesus Seminar radicals propose, is that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet, based on the "this generation" clause in the Olivet Discourse and subsequent imminent apocalyptic hopes found in the epistles. Paul certainly expected an immediate Parousia. I think the evidence for this trumps any evidence for the Resurrection.

Oh, well, obviously, if that's the _mainstream_ view, it must be true. Integrated Christians always assume that the view tagged "mainstream" is based on excellent, unbiased evidence and good evaluation thereof and therefore defer to it religiously. Oh, maybe not.

An integrated Christian mind studies the history of New Testament studies and discovers that it's a seriously messed-up field.

I think the evidence for this trumps any evidence for the Resurrection.

Goody for you. Your credentials as a person who is either misinformed or who has severe difficulties weighing up the balance of evidence are now assured.

Couple of things, Alex: First, Dawkins isn't (as far as I know) actually best known for his direct work in science. My impression is that he isn't doing any present research work in any actual scientific field. This may not be directly relevant to your question, but given that presumably you mentioned Dawkins as opposed to some other non-publishing person with a dusty science degree because Dawkins is famous, and given that he's famous for being a loud-mouthed atheist, well...You get the picture. His becoming a Christian might just return him to a realm of professional obscurity that would be good for him in many ways. Second, hubris is pretty bad for a scientist. Without wishing to start a firestorm, I have my doubts that Dawkins is evaluating the evidence on the subject of, say, abiogenesis in the most objective way possible. Suppose that the origin-of-life evidence points to design. IMO it would make someone a better scientist to acknowledge this (since presumably a scientist wants to know the truth about the origin of life) rather than continuing to seek purely materialistic explanations that are poor explanations of the evidence.

Really, Lydia? Then how do you get around the "this generation" clause? Sorry, but I don't think a stolen corpse (possibly a bunch of grave robbers) and bunch of hallucinations is more implausible than a divinely-ordained miracle, given the historical track record of purported miracles, the false utterances of Jesus, and general insanity of which people are capable.

Oh, "false utterances"! Yep, that's definitely more irenic than the Jesus Seminar folks, who at least only reduced Jesus to a sort of hippie Richard Rorty who was all peace-n-luvvy. Since the Jesus Seminar crowd is, on the evidence presented, less radical than the 'mainstream' as presented, the trolling fails on its own logic of dis-integration, for the less radical mainstream cannot be more radical than the radical.

But at least the question whether 'Anon' is a simple honest inquirer seeking wisdom or a thread-jacking troll is cleared up by the fire that follows upon the smoke.

As for me, I love TAC, I wish I'd known about it way back when I was trying to talk my father into paying for St John's in Annapolis, and TAC is one of about three places I send money when I feel flush enough to make donations. And if California weren't run by lunatics, I'd want to move to Santa Paula just to breathe the same air as TAC.

The college is living proof that Christian faith can be taught alongside of (and integrated with) openness to truth in all the other disciplines, and informing the search therewith

Thanks for this post, Tony.

TAC is an amazing place. During my last visit one of the things that really stood out was the private conversations of the students around campus. (Yes, I have a knack for eavesdropping.) These young men and women, during their "free" time, were consumed with the joy of discovery and the passion for truth stimulated in their classes. This is one of the few places on this earth where I have ever felt "at home".

I understand what the traditional Christian understanding is - but the fact remains that the clause comes after Jesus proclamation of the Son of Man coming in the clouds, gathering his elect; Jesus even explicitly says ALL these things shall come to pass. Jesus' teaching of the imminence of his coming also explains Paul's apocalyptic expectations, the placing of the end times right after Nero in Revelation, etc.

I would certainly think that this would relevant to an integrated Christian mind, since that certainly must encompass not only critical theory, but the plain reading of Scripture.

@Alex, without taking a view of Dawkins' current qualities as a scientist, passionate athiests like Dawkins have taken adament positions in disregard of the weakness of the 'evidence' in support therefor. It seems unlikely that this mental approach to truth would be limited to his areligious faith. A radical conversion to Christianity would at least potentially involve a re-examination of relevant evidence with some humility, given his previous positions. If this lead to a more humble and less dogmatic analysis of scientific evidence as well, this could only make him a better scientist.

@Lydia, one really shouldn't feed the trolls. It only encourages them.

Dawkins isn't (as far as I know) actually best known for his direct work in science. My impression is that he isn't doing any present research work in any actual scientific field.

Lydia, Dawkins may be an incompetent scientist for all I know. In my copy of The Selfish Gene, he is described as a Reader in Zoology who became Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. I assume that he was appointed to those jobs on merit. (I don't know whether there's an equivalent of Reader at American universities.)

He was the first scientist that, so to speak, popped into my head - perhaps as an egregious example - when thinking about whether a scientist who is also a Christian could expect to improve his capacity to find truth outside of doctrine.

Suppose Dawkins really is all he's cracked up to be in a certain scientific field of inquiry, could he expect to become even more proficient if he had the sort of intellectual framework that an education at Thomas Aquinas College provides?

Suppose Dawkins really is all he's cracked up to be in a certain scientific field of inquiry,

My point was simply that what you've cited isn't really a matter of being cracked up to be that much in any field of science per se. I mean, look, being a professor for the public understanding of science tells us pretty much zip about how good of a zoologist he is. He has a credential in zoology. Big whoop. That's not what he's famous for and isn't, as far as I know, what he's doing work in right now. What he's "cracked up to be" isn't some kind of wonderful, top-notch zoologist.

But if being a good zoologist is in any sense improved by having it right on where life came from in the first place, please check out my second point, above.

Suppose Dawkins really is all he's cracked up to be in a certain scientific field of inquiry, could he expect to become even more proficient if he had the sort of intellectual framework that an education at Thomas Aquinas College provides?

I would think that possessing the intellectual tools capable of identifying the flaws in certain assumptions employed by modern science - naturalism, materialism, etc. - couldn't help but make him a more proficient scientist. And in Dawkins' case, basic familiarity with logical syllogisms and fallacies - the kind that becomes second nature to a TAC grad - would go a long way toward restraining false conclusions.

However, I can't believe that non-Christians are necessarily at a disadvantage in the quest to find truth(s) outside of Christian doctrine.

Alex, all I can say is that the man of faith is going to have some points of the truth that will enable him to say of an apparent conclusion from one of the sciences, " you haven't covered all your bases and examined all your assumptions", where a man without that faith may easily overlook the defects or ambiguities in the conclusions. Newton's (now infamous) assumptions about the nature of space: for 200 years, hardly anyone imagined shaking a stick at them and saying, let's take another look at those assumptions.

Suppose (by almost a miracle) that Richard Dawkins became a Christian. While his conversion would no doubt effect a moral transformation in his character, why should it make him a more competent scientist?

As Lydia points out, all scientists - Christian and non-Christian alike - are ill served by hubris. A Christian one may not be less prideful (if his Christianity is not being lived out well), but he may at least slow down his rush toward unproven or ambiguous conclusions that oppose the OTHER source of truth that he holds firmly. I am a mathematician: when I come across a math "proof" that shows a final answer like 4 = 5, I know immediately that the proof is wrong even if I cannot say where it is, and I know I can be confident insisting on "let's go a little slower and re-examine this more carefully" and eventually I will find some invalid step or something that hides an ambiguity in definitions. Same way with the Christian biologist or Christian physicist: if the "proof" seems to come to a conclusion like "there can be no soul", he is immediately ready to slow down and insist on a more careful analysis. His faith doesn't tell him WHERE the scientist made a mistake, but only THAT there is some mistake (or at least some equivocation) going on. That's not really making Dawkins more knowledgeable about biology, but it makes him a more cautious, more careful scientist. And to know "we don't know why this 'proof' is wrong but it is" is better than falsely thinking the proof is right.

I take your point about hubris, but I don't know enough about abiogenesis to have an opinion about Dawkins' evaluation of the evidence. Though I guess you're right about that.

I think I've driven myself into a dead end by asking whether Dawkins as a scientist (rather than a controversialist) would be better at what he does, whatever that is, if he had a Christian faith.

Let's start again. Suppose there's a scientist, any scientist, who has well merited reputation in his field but doesn't give answers to philosophical questions he doesn't understand, would he be an even better scientist if he had a Christian education? Granted he should be a better person, but, if we could be objective about it, better at his job?

Are you saying that one verse (Matthew 24:34) disproves Christianity? If the Bible did not contain that one assertion, would you be a Christian?

And if the answers are "No" and "No," you should stop trying to disqualify Christianity on a technicality. After all, the "plain meaning" is not necessarily the correct meaning. Scripture interprets Scripture, and one apparent outlier does not invalidate a doctrine.

I'd modify what I've just said by noting that all sciences have metaphysical foundations that few scientists seem prepared to acknowledge and fewer still appear to be even aware of. And that is why a Christian education that investigates the unexamined assumptions of science is so valuable.

I'd modify what I've just said by noting that all sciences have metaphysical foundations that few scientists seem prepared to acknowledge and fewer still appear to be even aware of. And that is why a Christian education that investigates the unexamined assumptions of science is so valuable.

That's right. A classical, Christian education provides the tools and the disposition required to examine one's most closely held (and barely noticed) assumptions - something deeply rooted, I think, in the Christian tradition of self-examination. A TAC-style education, still more, trains the mind in coherent thinking, in not putting carts before horses.

Suppose there's a scientist, any scientist, who has well merited reputation in his field but doesn't give answers to philosophical questions he doesn't understand, would he be an even better scientist if he had a Christian education? Granted he should be a better person, but, if we could be objective about it, better at his job?

Not necessarily but possibly. How's that for an honest answer? I think it would depend a lot on the _kind_ of Christian education. There are certainly Christian educations that are orthodox but shoddy. It probably also depends on how important one thinks origins science is to science as a whole or to various scientific fields. Now, I'm a little unusual in that regard. I'm probably more willing than most people to acknowledge that someone can be a good scientist, especially in an area like physics, who scarcely ever thinks about origins science. Try telling that to the secularists, however. They'll howl. They are the ones telling us that origins science is somehow integral to all of science. They are (literally) the ones telling us that any state or country that allows anyone to question Darwinism is going to raise a bunch of embarrassing scientific ignoramuses who are incapable of "competing in the modern world" (or, presumably, building bridges or working in pharmaceuticals or heaven knows what else). Now, if they are (or were) right about that, then I would turn this on its head: Given that I think most of them are wrong about origins science and are, in fact, taught by their "scientific" training to be shoddy and dogmatic in this area and to accept highly implausible explanations as gospel truth, then on their own suppositions, they would be better scientists if they had different beliefs in that area.

Okay, there are some scientific problems with the assumption of a single truth. As I understand it, general relativity depends upon the concept that there is no absolute frame of reference. Observers in different relative states can have different experiences of a universal aspect of reality (time) and both are valid and true. Second, quantum mechanics is deeply antithetical to the notion of a single truth. At the most fundamental level of matter and energy, probalistic flux is the only truth to be had.

Step2, if I didn't know you better, I would think maybe you posed this just to make trouble. Actually, since I DO know you better,...

I certainly didn't use the expression "Truth is one" to mean that there is only one true statement, one proposition, etc. Not even (in re the mechanists and clock-makers) that the whole universe and all its action in can be expressed in one single formula. Merely that there is no "Proposition X is true for physics" while in the same respect "Proposition X is not-true for religion" where there is no equivocation on the meaning of X. What is true, so far as it IS true it is true for the scientists as much as for those studying theology, or those meditating in God's presence.

Tony, cards on the table. Do you believe in a literal Garden of Eden with a tree of immortal life, a tree of moral knowledge, and that human women were created from the rib of the first human male who was individually created from dust? Do you really expect scientists to accept these are concrete facts and not mythical explanations?

Do you really expect scientists to accept these are concrete facts and not mythical explanations?

I neither expect scientists - qua science - to "accept" these are concrete facts, nor to consider them as mere mythical accounts. I expect scientists to look for all the evidence needed and possible before rendering definite claims, and I expect Christian scientists to hold firmly that evidence that points _in the direction_ of a proposition directly opposed to the Christian Faith to be evidence that is incomplete and in need of elaboration.

I don't see why I need to put my cards on the table, but I will anyway: I believe all those things taught by the Catholic Church as being definitively revealed in God's inspired Scripture, in the sense those Scriptures are intended by their Author. The Catholic Church does not teach that there was literally a concrete tree of immortal life. Nor does she teach that Adam was individually created directly from dust.

You need to expand your horizons if you think that the literal sense of Genesis (taking "literal" in the sense that a 3-year-old would understand by the words if he were told they were literally true) and "myth" are the only 2 options available. I blame your teachers, and their teachers, for bamboozling you and damaging your understanding of possible levels of meaning. Just to begin with, there is the literal sense, the allegorical sense, the moral sense, and the anagogical sense. In various perspectives, these carry out mystical and/or figurative senses, using spiritual exegesis, typology, or sensus plenior. In a difficult and problematic way (for the person without faith, anyway) these other senses all depend on the literal sense - but this takes "literal" in a special manner: that meaning which was the primary meaning in the mind of the human writer when he wrote the passage.

For example, I consider it all but certain that the writer of Genesis (whom I will call Moses for simplicity, not because I am convinced he did write it) did not mean by "day" a 24-hour period. For, he uses "first day" to describe the passage of events, which he ALSO describes as "evening and morning". But there could have been no possible evening in our standard sense of sun setting, and no possible morning in the sense of our sun rising, because the sun was not created until later in the account. Therefore, it is definitive that Moses meant something else by "evening" and "morning" for the first day, and thus "day" probably means something else too. What, I don't claim to fathom.

Now, Step2, cards on the table: do you accept the scientistic, physicalist accounts that leave no possibility of anything that is not "physical stuff" and "blind physical forces"? Eradicating the soul, intention, meaning, choice, and rational argument?

The Catholic Church does not teach that there was literally a concrete tree of immortal life. Nor does she teach that Adam was individually created directly from dust.

True, but she doesn't exclude the possibility either, and the weight of Catholic exegetical tradition mitigates in favor these interpretations. Certainly the creation of Adam from the dust of the earth, which is not de fide, is no more problematic from a scientific perspective than the creation of Eve from the side of Adam, which isde fide.

Cards on the table: if the above interpretations are correct - and I believe they are - Catholics will not be in the least embarrassed by them.

based on the "this generation" clause in the Olivet Discourse and subsequent imminent apocalyptic hopes found in the epistles. Paul certainly expected an immediate Parousia.

Yes, and he got one: do some reading about "preterism", an increasingly popular interpretation of the Book of Revelation. In summary, the view is that Jesus did indeed predict his imminent return in the Olivet Discourse - and he *did* return with judgement on Jerusalem in A.D. 70, culminating in that city's destruction, an event that fulfilled most (not all) of Revelation.

The soul is only "eradicated" if you mean the traditional theistic definiton of an individual afterlife. I've gone on record entertaining some other notions about what aspects of our imaginations and intellects might continue after our deaths and without our active will to change them. Intention, meaning, choice and rational arguments are all physical stuff, they are just reflections and explorations of our unique individual mapping and language strategies.

The problem with preterism is that it does not reflect the way the prophecy was understood by the apostles at all - Paul speaks of the dead rising immediately after the coming of Christ and of the gathering of the elect into the clouds, which goes directly back to the Olivet Discourse. Revelation's depiction of the Parousia only supports that this was the understanding. Again, the most natural explanation of why the apostles and early Christians thought the Second Coming - physical, with the attendant Resurrection - was imminent is that Jesus himself taught it. And even if he didn't, even if the early Christians simply misunderstood Jesus, how plausible is it that the Son of God would leave his disciples in error in such a central aspect of his teaching?

To say that my position rests solely on one passage grossly mischaracterizes it; the "this generation" clause is indeed central, as is Thessalonians, but the general apocalyptic tenor of the New Testament (kingdom of God is at hand, etc), that Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist, and the 1st century Jewish cultural milieu (apocalytpic cults were common) are also important elements of the argument.

The soul is only "eradicated" if you mean the traditional theistic definiton of an individual afterlife.

Wrong. Aristotle didn't have any proposed theory of an afterlife in which men are aware of and do things, but he certainly maintained the souls of plants, animals, and humans as being other than simply matter.

Intention, meaning, choice and rational arguments are all physical stuff, they are just reflections and explorations of our unique individual mapping and language strategies.

Now I know you are not serious. Thank you for making it clear. The full import of your position is held by another proponent of scientism, Alex Rosenberg, who admits to the consequences of the theory: that logic isn't real, it is just an illusion generated in complex groups of stuff we call brains, wherein the brain fires neurons in a determined way and produce the sensation of logic in us, but the sensation has nothing to "do" with anything else. As a consequence, the "science" by which we discover this "truth" is, also, just an illusion generated by those same complex groups of stuff. We have no more reason to rely on those feelings of logic in us than we have in other people's feelings of faith - they are simply neurons firing, nothing more, and there is nothing that ties these firings to anything like "meaning" whatsoever. Meaning too is just an illusion from the same source. See here for Ed Feser's last part of a 10 part series taking apart Rosenberg's The Atheist's Guide to Reality".

Naturally, self-defeating scientism that calls intention, meaning, choice and logic merely physical stuff is, after all, DEFEATED. I need not raise a finger to dispel the nonsense, it washes its own self away in navel-staring and *unintentional* comedy.

Anon, you said “…how plausible is it that the Son of God would leave his disciples in error in such a central aspect of his teaching?”

But prophecy is always notoriously difficult to interpret until after it has been fulfilled. And the truly central teaching of the Apostles was repentance and faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

Okay, there are some scientific problems with the assumption of a single truth.

Actually, no.

As I understand it, general relativity depends upon the concept that there is no absolute frame of reference. Observers in different relative states can have different experiences of a universal aspect of reality (time) and both are valid and true.

That would be Special Relativity, actually. And since those descriptions are relative to their respective frames of reference, they aren't in conflict with one another. The take-home message of SR is that neither space nor time is absolute, but the spacetime interval is the same for all observers in all frames of reference without exception. That is why Einstein himself preferred to call his discovery Invariantentheorie.

Second, quantum mechanics is deeply antithetical to the notion of a single truth. At the most fundamental level of matter and energy, probalistic flux is the only truth to be had.

Wrong again; even on a Copenhagen interpretation of QM, there are not multiple truths. Rather, the mathematical representation of the measurable state of a system is an angle that typically lies inbetween two orthogonal axes in Hilbert space that represent measurables. That vector doesn't tell us with certainty what the measurable state will be; this is where probabilities arise. But it is unambiguously in that quantum state, not in two incompatible macrostates simultaneously -- whatever the popular books may say.

Aristotle didn't have any proposed theory of an afterlife in which men are aware of and do things, but he certainly maintained the souls of plants, animals, and humans as being other than simply matter.

He was negatively influenced by Plato, and even then his view on Forms were more thoroughly integrated with observable evidence.

Note that I didn't say any of those were illusions, that is your projection of Rosenberg's claims upon mine. Your own dogma presupposes an order and logic to the world, there is no good reason for me to suppose logic and order only exist in some immaterial dimension roughly connected yet totally outside of spacetime.

And since those descriptions are relative to their respective frames of reference, they aren't in conflict with one another.

They don't have to be in conflict in order to describe multiple truths. I'm make a perspectivist argument.

But it is unambiguously in that quantum state, not in two incompatible macrostates simultaneously -- whatever the popular books may say.

So you've got a solution to Schrodinger's cat. I'll bet the cat is happy.

You proposed a set of scientific challenges to the unity of truth. They don't work.

As for Schrödinger's cat, I'm an Einstein-style realist, so I take the uncertainty to be epistemic, not metaphysical. In other words, the cat is either alive or dead. Quantum theory is just incomplete as a description of reality. It's a perspective that is gaining popularity these days; see Jim Cushing's work on the history of quantum theory if you want details.

They don't have to be in conflict in order to describe multiple truths. I'm make a perspectivist argument.

And unless that perspectivist argument claims that insofar as you are doing physics, proposition X is wholly true and not-X is false, and insofar as you are doing theology, not-X is wholly true and X is false (where "X" is univocal), it is irrelevant to my point. Are you seriously trying to suggest that a physicist (qua physics) will say that the cat is alive and the preacher (qua theology) that the cat is not-alive, and they will both be correct IN THE EXACT SAME SENSE? I didn't think so. Then your remark about physics is beside the point of THIS thread.

Note that I didn't say any of those were illusions, that is your projection of Rosenberg's claims upon mine. Your own dogma presupposes an order and logic to the world, there is no good reason for me to suppose logic and order only exist in some immaterial dimension roughly connected yet totally outside of spacetime.

Oh, Step2, do read the linked Ed Feser breakdown of Rosenberg. Materialists can claim to wiggle this way and that out of the conclusions Rosenberg draws, but they don't actually succeed. Rosenberg is simply admitting the inevitable conclusions that must be true if materialistic scientism is correct: that every chain of reasoning is in no way "connected to" any subject matter "about which" it purports to be true, it is merely _accidents_ of neurons firing that happen to fire in the proximity of other thoughts (neurons firing) without any basis for a later thought to be true on account of earlier thoughts. And then the underlying problems with mind being physical stuff and nothing but are simply insurmountable: if there is no non-material mind, there is no real aboutness of thought, and there cannot be true reasonings, and then there cannot be science either to discover that all is physical.

But to be more definitive: this post is about the way in which faith and reason interact in pursuit of understanding, not the way in which faith is right or wrong about non-material reality. There are atheists who believe in non-physical realities, so whether there is non-physical reality is not essential to the dispute non-fideists have with the faithful, and so it is off-topic to drag us into THAT argument here.

I thought my first example was clear that it was the experience of truth that is different and multiple, i.e. relative time flow. I didn't say those contradicted each other, which is apparently what both you and Tony think is the only criterion for claiming multiple truths. Furthermore it was Tony's overreaching claim of a singular unified truth that supposedly makes it impossible to legitimately have a different perspective that doesn't align with a theistic one. However when I actually brought up some primary theistic truth claims, that "singular unified truth" is based upon four different senses of reading Scripture, Catholic authority, and some sort of divination whereby we understand what the author really meant based on things we don't know.

Rosenberg is simply admitting the inevitable conclusions that must be true if materialistic scientism is correct: that every chain of reasoning is in no way "connected to" any subject matter "about which" it purports to be true, it is merely _accidents_ of neurons firing that happen to fire in the proximity of other thoughts (neurons firing) without any basis for a later thought to be true on account of earlier thoughts.

That doesn't even make sense, Rosenberg clearly doesn't know the first thing about neuroscience.

And then the underlying problems with mind being physical stuff and nothing but are simply insurmountable: if there is no non-material mind, there is no real aboutness of thought, and there cannot be true reasonings, and then there cannot be science either to discover that all is physical.

That is like saying there is no aboutness to running towards something or away from it, or there is no aboutness to grasping an object or manipulating it. Of course there is an aboutness to thought, since those basic survival actions were part of the causal chain that developed intelligent thought.

I thought my first example was clear that it was the experience of truth that is different and multiple, i.e. relative time flow.

Step2: Again, my point that "truth is one" isn't about perspectives, of which there can be many. When there are multiple perspectives, the X is true and about the same subject Y is also true, but they are true in different respects. It was about a man who is a physicist holding X to be true while holding not-X to be true while he does theology, all the while using "X" univocally (and how this failure of integration is avoidable). Unless your thesis about perspectives touches on X true and not-X true in the very same respect, the multiplicity doesn't touch my point at all. There is no issue with multiplicity. If you were making a point about multiplicity that doesn't touch on contradiction, you weren't addressing the sense of "one" that I was in saying "truth is one". Were you simply adding a new idea that is completely tangential to my thesis: yes, not only is truth one because it doesn't admit direct contradiction, but ALSO truth is multiple because it admits multiple frames of reference (which do not imply direct contradiction)"? In that case "one" and "many" are in different senses, and there is no "scientific problem" between them.

Or are you suggesting that there is a proposition X which a man rightly affirms when he does physics, and rightly affirms not-X when he does theology, or philosophy, or ethics, or biology, or sociology, all the while using "X" in the exact same sense?

Coherent thinking is not necessarily advantageous for a Scientist wishing to make a scientific advance.

Koestler in Sleepwalkers, his account of the life and work of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo had clarified how much confused and incoherent and obsessional was the thinking of these great scientists. If they were to be truly coherent, they certainly would not have made the discoveries they made. The counter-objections that were made to their work at that time were essentially correct.

I think all such controversial verses need to be referred back to the Greek original and not in English. What is the corresponding Greek word for "generation" and what are its connotations and denotations?
CS Lewis in Studies on Words has interesting things to say about how the 4-5 Latin and Greek words for "World" map into English. Some of them map to the "generation".
For instance, when Jesus speaks of "this wicked and adulterous generation seeks signs", he speaks to all of us. Plenty of people including a lot of atheists seek signs, even Dawkins.

It is a very wooden way of reading that would place "generation" to people that were living in 33 AD only. Perhaps it is meant more like "the times".

Were you simply adding a new idea that is completely tangential to my thesis: yes, not only is truth one because it doesn't admit direct contradiction, but ALSO truth is multiple because it admits multiple frames of reference (which do not imply direct contradiction)"?

I wouldn't say it was completely tangential because sufficiently different reference frames will imply a contradiction or at minimum a conflict. I mean, we have an instinctive desire to have a clear and commanding view of our landscape. If everything in my reference frame has virtually no overlap with yours, there is no reason for me to treat it as if it were equally true. In fact, I'm going to explain your reference frame in terms of an evolutionary psychological defense against debilitating grief and existential anxiety. Similarly, you will attribute my naturalism to vanity or sin and propose that my view is radically incomplete and dehumanized.

In that case "one" and "many" are in different senses, and there is no "scientific problem" between them.

Fair enough, I'll backtrack and say it isn't a scientific problem but it is a problem caused by the multiple reference frames of truth.

The counter-objections that were made to their work at that time were essentially correct.

Gian, this "essential correctness" can only be within a smaller scope of analysis than that within which the problem (and solution) finally caught on and made sense. Because the counter-objectors were not asking questions about certain assumptions that made the earlier approach "coherent". Unless you want to suggest that the physical world itself changed with Galileo, and later changed again from black and white to color with the invention of color film (as with Calvin's dad's explanations).

It's always good to be aware of your assumptions and at least consider them once in a while.

Post a comment

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If
your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same
comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.